the European enlightenment through a focus on theology and ethics rather
than custom and practice. Judaism was no longer to be considered a nation
but a religious community (Stark 1996, 54).
In Stark’s view, the factors that made Reform Judaism an attractive
option to marginalized nineteenth-century European Jews are the same as
those that would have made Christianity appealing to Hellenized Diaspora
Jews of the first five centuries CE. This analysis of both Hellenistic Jews of
the first century CEand emancipated Jews of the nineteenth century illus-
trates a point made previously by Jack Lightstone (chapter 5). Lightstone
argues that group identity is forged not only over against other social groups
but also through patterns of interaction with them. The potential for con-
flict among such groups is greatest when one group takes members of
another group into social arenas, which the latter group has not mapped
out as areas where co-participation is acceptable.
Although Stark is likely correct in portraying Diaspora Jews as being
caught between two cultures, his portrait is problematical in several respects.
First is the use of Philo, a first-century Alexandrian Jew, as typical or rep-
resentative of Diaspora Jews throughout the Roman Empire in the first
through fifth centuries CE. It may be the case that Diaspora Jews outnum-
bered Palestinian Jews by at least four to one—Stark (1996, 57) estimates
four to six million Diaspora Jews as compared with one million Palestin-
ian Jews—and that these several million Jews lived in numerous commu-
nities covering a large geographical area throughout the Roman Empire. If
so, it seems reasonable to posit some variety in Jewish identity.
Following Stark, we may consider a modern analogy. There are palpable
differences among the handful of Jews in South Porcupine; members of a
small Jewish but well-organized community in Hamilton, Ontario; the sizable
but declining Jewish community in Montreal, Quebec; and the million-strong
and prominent Jewish population of New York City, New York. An assessment
of North American Jewry based on a single one of these communities might
discover certain common concerns, such as intermarriage, and identify areas
of accommodation to non-Jewish culture and society, but would err in gen-
eralizing about more subtle matters such as the receptiveness to new ideas and
adherence to tradition or the particular tensions within the Jewish commu-
nity or between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations. The specific set-
tings affect the ways in which Jewish identity is configured and expressed,
and they also define the range of Jewish expression available. If this is true
in our own day, how much more so for an era without newspapers, air travel,
the telephone, or the Internet! On this basis, we are justified in our reserve
about taking Philo as representative of Diaspora Judaism as such.
Rodney Stark and “The Mission to the Jews” 205